Dominic Thiem Picture Credit: ATP
With Madrid Open entering into its business end, No. 3 seed Dominic Thiem locked horns with Australia’s Alex de Minaur in which the former emerged victorious in straight sets 7-6, 6-4 to process through to the Quarter-Finals.
After a stellar and dominant performance in the Round of 32 against United States’ Marcos Giron, Thiem continued his terrific form even in the Round of 16. However, the 22-year-old, Minaur did show immense resistance with his service, but Thiem was quick on focusing on the flaws of his opponent.
1st Set
With the Round of 16 game commencing, Minaur displayed immense pace and his serve did seem to bother the No.3 seed, Thiem. Yet the latter managed to counter Minaur by pushing him to play on the backend of the court, time and again. After breaking the serve first, Thiem seemed like running away with the game, until Alex de Minaur found his way back into the game.
Eventually, the 1st set went into a tie-breaker, where Dominic Thiem showed his experience against the Australian and won the tiebreaker 9-7.
2nd Set
Having won the 1st set, Thiem seemed to be very comfortable on winning the game on 2nd serve against Minaur. With a comfortable lead of 2 games, the Australian youngster always seemed to catch up to the pace of the set. With some resistance towards the end, Thiem was applaud-worthy in making his opponent fight hard for every point, while Minaur kept on making unforced errors.
Even though Alex de Minaur caught up in the 2nd set by winning 4 games to Thiem’s 5, it seemed like he had run out of gas. Justifying the same, Thiem delivered the knockout punch in winning the game 6-4 and continued to win both his game in straight sets.